Eugene V. Debs, Defender of American Liberty

Eugene V. Debs at Labor Conventionon January 1, 1910.
(Photo by Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

Released from jail on this day 130 years ago, the great socialist and labor leader delivered a speech we would do well to remember in these perilous times.


Jeffrey C. Isaac
Nov 22, 2025

Common Dreams

On November 22, 1895, Eugene V. Debs was released from Woodstock Jail, where he had been imprisoned for six months for his leadership of the 1894 Pullman strike. Later that day, before a large crowd of supporters at Battery D in Chicago, he spoke on the topic of “Liberty.”

Debs was a great orator, and “Liberty” is a brilliant speech, powerfully evoking both “the spirit of liberty” heralded by the Declaration of Independence, and the promise of a freedom yet to be redeemed by American workers in thrall to plutocratic government. As Nick Salvatore noted in his classic biography, Eugene V. Debs, Citizen and Socialist, this speech marked an important moment in the evolution of Debs from a radically republican labor activist to the country’s leading socialist.


Debs notes his own situation, “stripped of my constitutional rights as a freeman and shorn of the most sacred prerogatives of American citizenship.” He proceeds to defend the American Railway Union as a necessary and legitimate organization of workers, and the strike as a legitimate means of pursuing justice, which“ threw down no gauntlet to courts or armies—it simply resisted the invasion of the rights of workingmen by corporations.”

An adamant defense of worker rights, the speech’s overriding theme is unmistakably the political theme of “liberty” and indeed democracy. This is clear from Debs’s opening words:
Manifestly the spirit of ‘76 still survives. The fires of liberty and noble aspirations are not yet extinguished. I greet you tonight as lovers of liberty and as despisers of despotism. I comprehend the significance of this demonstration and appreciate the honor that makes it possible for me to be your guest on such an occasion. The vindication and glorification of American principles of government, as proclaimed to the world in the Declaration of Independence, is the high purpose of this convocation.

The entire first half of the speech centers on the theme of “personal liberty; or giving it its full height, depth, and breadth, American liberty, something that Americans have been accustomed to eulogize since the foundation of the Republic.” Paying tribute to the republic’s founding—“For the first time in the records of all the ages, the inalienable rights of man, ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ were proclaimed July 4, 1776”—Debs proceeds to wax poetically, for eight long paragraphs, about the enduring resonance of that 1776 proclamation, the indivisibility of liberty, and the “more than satanic crime of stealing the jewel of liberty from the crown of manhood and reducing the victim of the burglary to slavery or to prison.” It is for this crime that he morally indicts the railroad magnates and their federal government allies for breaking the strike and imprisoning its leaders.

Debs insists that it is the labor movement that most embodies “the spirit of ‘76”:
To the unified hosts of American working men fate has committed the charge of rescuing American liberties from the grasp of the vandal horde that have placed them in peril, by seizing the ballot and wielding it to regain the priceless heritage and to preserve and transmit it without scar or blemish to the generations yet to come.

The ballot, Debs notes approvingly, “has been called a weapon that executes a free man’s will as lighting does the will of God.” Debs rhapsodizes in almost religious tones about the power of democratic elections:
There is nothing in our government it cannot remove or amend. It can make and unmake presidents and congresses and courts. It can abolish unjust laws and consign to eternal odium and oblivion unjust judges, strip from them their robes and gowns and send them forth unclean as lepers to bear the burden of merited obloquy as Cain with the mark of a murderer. It can sweep away trusts, syndicates, corporations, monopolies, and every other abnormal development of the money power designed to abridge the liberties of workingmen and enslave them by the degradation incident to poverty and enforced idleness, as cyclones scatter the leaves of the forest. The ballot can do all this and more. It can give our civilization its crowning glory—the cooperative commonwealth.

Debs appreciated the rhetorical and the inspirational power of the dissenting American political tradition that hearkened back to the Revolution and its “spirit of ‘76,” a tradition that included his heroes Jefferson, Paine, Garrison, Phillips, Lincoln, and Anthony. And he firmly believed that civil liberties and regular democratic elections represented forms of genuine if precarious social progress whose defense and expansion offered real opportunities for the furtherance of social and economic justice. He was, in short, a democrat.

He ended his speech with the hope that “American lovers of liberty are setting in operation forces to rescue their constitutional liberties from the grasp of monopoly and its mercenary hirelings.” That hope was not in vain, even if the Pullman strike was suppressed and Debs twice found himself in prison for refusing to be silenced, in 1895 and then in 1918 when imprisoned for his famous “Canton address,” critiquing WWI. The labor movement he helped to lead played a crucial role in advancing many of the policies—from the 8-hour workday to occupational safety and health regulation to “social security” broadly understood—that most Americans today simply take for granted. Debs was indeed one of the 20th century’s true crusaders for civil liberties and democratic inclusion. And his distinctive vision of a democratic socialism established an enduring legacy whose most recent heir is New York City’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, who indeed quoted Debs in his victory speech.At a time when the Trump administration is attacking liberty on a daily basis, targeting everyone on the left as a “radical lunatic” and “enemy from within,” and seeking to destroy the very possibility of political dissent and opposition, Debs’s paean to “Liberty” on November 22, 1895—and his commitment to its active promotion—has never been more relevant.





Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Jeffrey C. Isaac
Jeffrey C. Isaac is James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. His books include: "Democracy in Dark Times"(1998); "The Poverty of Progressivism: The Future of American Democracy in a Time of Liberal Decline" (2003), and "Arendt, Camus, and Modern Rebellion" (1994).
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NO PASARAN!

French official to sue over ‘revisionist’ remarks hailing Nazi collaborator Pétain

A senior French official on Saturday said he planned to take legal action over remarks hailing Vichy leader and Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain as “France’s first resistant fighter”. The comments, which the official described as “clearly revisionist’ were made following a mass in Pétain’s honour.


Issued on: 15/11/2025 
By: FRANCE 24

Samuel Hazard, mayor of the French city of Verdun, said he was deeply hurt by the praise for Pétain. 

© Jean-Christophe Verhaegen, AFP

A senior French official said Saturday he would take legal action over comments made following a tribute to Philippe Pétain, France’s wartime head of state convicted of treason after World War II.

The row is the latest controversy over the legacy of Pétain, a World War I hero disgraced for his collaboration with the Nazis.

Xavier Delarue, the government prefect of Meuse department in eastern France, said he would take action over comments made following a mass for Pétain organised by an association dedicated to restoring his reputation.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez also condemned the comments.

The Association to Defend the Memory of Marshal Pétain (ADMP) organised a mass Saturday at the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Verdun, where Pétain won a famous WWI battle in 1916.

Around 20 association members attended, while outside about 100 people, watched by police, gathered to protest the ceremony.

After the mass ADMP president Jacques Boncompain told journalists that Pétain had been “the first resistant fighter of France”.

Boncompain also said Pétain’s post-war conviction for treason by a High Court of Justice had not been a fair one.

Delarue, announcing his legal action, said the comments had been “clearly revisionist”.

Nunez, in a post on X, said: “The remarks made today on the sidelines of a mass in ‘tribute’ to Philippe Pétain in Verdun go against our collective memory.”

The minister condemned any attempt to rehabilitate someone linked to WWII collaboration and oppression.
‘Deeply hurt’

The ceremony in tribute to Pétain came just days after France’s Armistice Day on November 11, the day WWI ended, when the nation remembers those who fought and died in the conflict.

Verdun’s mayor, Samuel Hazard, had tried to ban the pro-Petain ceremony, but was overruled by an administrative court ruling on Friday.

“I’m deeply hurt, because I think of all the victims of Nazi barbarism and... Marshal Pétain’s ideology,” he said after Saturday’s ceremony.

Pétain’s admirers stress the role he played as a general in World War I. He is widely seen as the architect of France’s victory over German forces at Verdun, the longest battle of the war.

But he only avoided the death penalty after being convicted at the end of WWII for leading France’s collaborationist Vichy government because of his advanced age.

Pétain died in 1951, six years into his life sentence in exile on the Atlantic island of Yeu.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

IT WAS COMMUNISTS, ANARCHISTS, TRADE UNIONISTS, HOUSEWIVES WHO

MADE UP THE RESISTANCE

IS PARIS BURNING

 

Who Was Eugene Debs?

by Michael K. Smith / November 12th, 2025

Zohran Mamdani’s quoting of Eugene Debs in his recent victory speech (for mayor of New York City) should awaken interest in the man who gained a name for himself as “Mr. Socialism.”

For seventeen years Debs was the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, starving himself of sleep to bone up on politics, economics, and history. With painstaking effort he made himself into a manager’s worst nightmare: an educated union man who could unravel the knots of capitalist contradiction, making the need for revolution plain for all to see.

Unable to ignore workers’ constant pleas for help, he went everywhere he was called, never managing to get his suitcase unpacked. In bad years he donated up to $900 of his $1500 salary to keeping the union and its magazine afloat, steering the workers through strikes, depression, and looming bankruptcy.

Night after night he went tramping through railroad yards, where his constant agitation got him thrown out of the roundhouse (a circular building used for servicing and storing trains) and ejected from trains.

He became a magnificent popular speaker, eventually making socialism as American as the Liberty Bell.  He praised the fighting spirit of the workers and heaped scorn on the mining companies and “cockroach” small shop capitalists who exploited them.  Even those who had heard it all before couldn’t resist his spell. When he rehearsed his speeches at home his neighbors came out onto their porches to eavesdrop.

By the time he ran for president for in 1904 (the second of five attempts, the last one from a prison cell), socialism had elbowed its way onto the national political scene. Schoolteachers warned of its growing menace; workers jammed meeting halls to hear of its glowing promise.

Debs was the unanimous choice to represent the Socialist Party that year. In the wake of a dizzying spate of corporate mergers, three hundred firms controlled more than forty percent of the industrial capital of the country and monopoly quickly emerged as the dominant issue of the campaign. Selling out auditoriums with paid admissions, Debs ridiculed Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting schemes for their failure to realign class power, and scoffed at the notion that a state dominated by gigantic private corporations could ever alleviate the workers’ distress: “Government ownership of public utilities means nothing for labor under capitalist ownership of government,” he thundered.

With muckraking journalists continuing to expose the profit system’s massive fraud, waste, and abuse, more and more people inclined to the belief that capitalism was doomed.

The socialist Appeal to Reason boasted a readership of half a million, educating a huge mass of farmers, factory-workers, and railwaymen in the Mid-West alone. Its December anti-trust issue that year piled up three million advance orders, the largest edition of any newspaper in American history. In New York City, The Call was a staple of every working-class neighborhood while red-covered pamphlets of Marx and socialist brochures circulated in the millions throughout the country. Teddy Roosevelt warned that socialism was “far more ominous than any populist or similar movement in times past.” Radicals and reactionaries alike saw the Socialist Party as the future opposition party of the United States.

An army of Debs volunteers solicited contributions, rang doorbells, sold newspapers, talked up strangers, and shouted the political heresy of justice for workers from soapboxes and courthouse stairs, delivering four hundred twenty thousand votes for Debs, quadrupling his support of four years before.

Conceding that charity had a claim on private conscience but strenuously rejecting any worker entitlement to monopoly profits, Teddy Roosevelt rode a tsunami of corporate cash to victory at the polls.

Refusing to be stopped by rheumatism, lumbago, or chronic headaches, Debs ran for president again in 1908.

Touring the country by train in his “Red Special,” he drew huge crowds yearning to see the burning eyes of a prophet and feel the glow of solidarity from a real man of the people. For sixty-five consecutive days he addressed five to twenty rallies a day all across the country. The New York Times called his sold-out appearance in New York’s Hippodrome the greatest political meeting ever held in that city.

As vulgar smears and incendiary slanders failed to stop the rising socialist tide, a note of desperation crept into the voices of Democratic and Republican officials scheming to “Stop Debs.”

Republican William Howard Taft spoke for free at the Music Hall in his hometown of Cincinnati and could barely fill the seats; Debs charged a dime admission at the same hall to poor workers and had to turn many away.

In a spirit of fair competition the socialists proposed that Taft address their rally for twenty minutes in exchange for Debs speaking to the Republican audience for the same length of time. The Taft campaign quickly rejected the offer.

Known among workers as the “father of injunctions” for his success in quashing strikes by court order, Taft won the White House on the strength of vast corporate campaign donations via the National Association of Manufacturers.

Unable to crack the capitalist monopoly of political power, labor’s influence continued to grow in subsequent years through popular organizing and education. Finally, in 1917 it was dealt a decisive blow by Woodrow Wilson, who drafted workers into the industrial slaughter of modern warfare and sent them into Europe’s killing fields (WWI). Rejecting appeals to “patriotism,” Debs refused to go along, and was jailed for obstructing the draft. His speech at sentencing was a masterful appeal for socialism.¹

Given ten years in an Atlanta penitentiary, he befriended all his fellow inmates, in the end winning over even his jailers with his unfailing kindness and sincerity.

Only one heart was too hard for him to reach – Woodrow Wilson’s. In his waning days in the presidency the Great Idealist refused a customary Christmas pardon for Debs, whose conduct actually lived up to Wilson’s high-minded rhetoric, which merely rang hollow in the president’s mouth.

Finally released by Republican Warren Harding on Christmas Day 2021, Debs enjoyed the rare privilege of being able to say farewell to his fellow prisoners when the warden waived regulations for the occasion.

As Debs proceeded down the walkway leading away from the jail, a huge roar went up behind him from two thousand of society’s forgotten and despised. Turning to say goodbye, Prisoner 9563, who always refused special privileges and treated them as the men they were, took in the ovation, tears streaming down his face.²

ENDNOTES:

• 1
  “Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
  
  “I listened to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this prosecution, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions . . . Your Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in a fundamental change – but if possible by peaceable and orderly means. . .
  
  “I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.
  
  “In this country – the most favored beneath the bending skies – we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child – and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity …
  
  “I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned – that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all …
  
  “I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.
  
  “This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a great economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth….
  
  “Your Honor, I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice.”
  
  — Eugene Debs, 1918
• 2
  Sources:
  
  Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 3 – The Policies and Practices of the American Federation of Labor 1900-1909, (International Publishers, 1964) p. 306, 349, 356-7
  
  Joseph Freeman, An American Testament: a narrative of rebels and romantics, (Farrar & Rinehart, 1936, p. 36)
  
  Ray Ginger, The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs, (Rutgers, 1949)  p. 226, 230-3, 281-2
  
  Mathew Josephson, The President Makers: The Culture of Politics and Leadership in an Age of Enlightenment 1896-1919, (Harcourt, 1940) p. 168-9
  
  Louis Adamic, Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America,  (Chelsea House, 1958) p. 128-33
  
  Howard Zinn, Eugene Debs and the Idea of Socialism, August 8, 2022, www.rethinkingschools.org
  
  Debs speech at sentencing quoted from Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour, p. 107-9

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Michael K. Smith is the author of Portraits of Empire. He co-blogs with Frank Scott at www.legalienate.blogspot.com. Read other articles by Michael.

Bad Bunny vs. MAGA’s Bigoted Vision of America

The hatefulness and histrionics of Trump’s allies exemplify how the ill-formed and culturally biased so easily make fools of themselves.


Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny attends the premiere of "Caught Stealing" at the Regal Union Square in New York on August 26, 2025. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP

Ediberto Roman

Ernesto Sagás
Nov 08, 2025

Common Dreams

The selection of musical megastar Bad Bunny to headline the Super Bowl’s halftime show has ignited a storm of controversy among conservative circles. The ostensive reason is that Bad Bunny (born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is a Puerto Rican who sings in Spanish, and thus according to his MAGA critics, he does not represent “America.”

For the new form of conservativism known as MAGA, the vision of America and Americans is narrow, and does not include the likes of Bad Bunny. Newsmax host Greg Kelly, for instance, claimed Bad Bunny “hates America, hates President Trump, hates ICE, [and] hates the English language!” Fox News host Tomi Lahren, meanwhile, claimed Bad Bunny is “Not an American artist.” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson not only mislabeled Bad Bunny as “Bad Bunny Rabbit,” he argued Bad Bunny was not a role model, calling for replacing him with someone with “broader Appeal,” like 82-year-old Lee Greenwood.

The Bad Bunny controversy raises the question: what is America and how should it be represented?

The histrionics of MAGA leaders exemplify how the ill-formed and culturally biased so easily make fools of themselves. For instance, the trope that Bad Bunny is not American demonstrates profound ignorance. Bad Bunny was born in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. As such, he was a United States citizen at birth. Puerto Rico has been a US possession since its conquest in 1898, and its residents have been US citizens since the passage of the Jones Act in 1917.

As for Bad Bunny hating America, this claim is nothing short of odd. Though Bad Bunny did not support candidate Trump in 2024, and disagrees with ICE roundups, 75 million Americans did not vote for President Trump (something that residents of Puerto Rico cannot do), and we suspect millions of others, including the authors here, do not support mass ICE roundups. Such free speech stances, which are at the core of the First Amendment of the Constitution, in no way reflect any disdain for this country. As James Baldwin poignantly taught decades ago, and is the case for millions of others today, it is our love for this country that leads us to question it in order to push it towards our laudable goals of freedom and equality.

Further, Bad Bunny singing in Spanish in no way means he hates this country or its dominant language, English. Bad Bunny is fluent in English but prefers to sing in his native tongue of Spanish. While Trump proclaimed English as the country’s official language, such a declaration does not carry the weight of law. That edict also appears to run afoul of a host of US Supreme Court decisions embracing our multicultural and multilingual country, including Meyer v. Nebraska, which held invalid efforts to forbid teaching foreign languages, and Lau v. Nichols. holding that failure to provide non-English instruction violated students’ civil rights.

The United States of America is a multicultural, multiracial nation made up of the descendants of immigrants from all over the world, as well as Indigenous nations and other lands that were conquered during a period of US imperial expansion in the 19th century. Puerto Ricans have fought bravely and died valiantly in America’s wars since WWI, and they contribute in numerous ways to make America great. So, why being a Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican makes of Bad Bunny less of an American in MAGA cohorts?

For months now, we have been witnessing a whitewashing of the American experience spearheaded by the Trump administration. Museums, colleges and universities, and even our very diverse military have all been forced to scrub references to the valuable contributions made by women, people of color, and immigrants (except for white ones).

Puerto Ricans, a Spanish-speaking, Latin American people of color (who also happen to be US citizens), do not fit the MAGA mold, and Bad Bunny’s fame is a reminder that our nation, based on the principle of E pluribus unum (Out of many, one) can be proudly represented by many people in many ways.

Previous Super Bowl halftime performers, many of them foreign-born, have reflected our nation’s best (and diverse) talents, but suddenly, a Puerto Rican is not American enough? Turning Point USA’s “All American” alternative halftime show is quite revealing of MAGA’s cultural whitewashing attempts by promising “Anything in English.”

This piece was first published in the Miami Herald.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Ediberto Roman
Ediberto Roman is professor of Law & Director of Immigration and Citizenship Initiatives at Florida International University.
Full Bio >

Ernesto Sagás
Ernesto Sagás is Professor of Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University. He has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Florida with a concentration in Latin American studies.
Full Bio >

Bad Bunny and Puerto Rican Muslims: How both remix what it means to be Boricua

(The Conversation) — Like Bad Bunny’s music, Puerto Rican Muslims’ lives challenge ideas about race, religion and belonging in the Americas.

The Mezquita Al-Madinah in Hatillo, Puerto Rico, about an hour west of San Juan, is one of several mosques and Islamic centers on the island. 

Ken Chitwood
November 6, 2025

(The Conversation) — Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is more than a global music phenomenon; he’s a bona fide symbol of Puerto Rico.

The church choir boy turned “King of Latin Trap” has songs, style and swagger that reflect the island’s mix of pride, pain and creative resilience. His music mixes reggaetón beats with the sounds of Puerto Rican history and everyday life, where devotion and defiance often live side by side.

Bad Bunny has been called one of Puerto Rico’s “loudest and proudest voices.” Songs like “El Apagón” – “The Blackout” – celebrate joy and protest together, honoring everyday acts of resistance to colonial rule and injustice in Puerto Rican life. Others, like “NUEVAYoL,” celebrate the sounds and vibrancy of its diaspora – especially in New York City. Some songs, like “RLNDT,” mention spiritual searching – featuring allusions to his own Catholic upbringing, sacred and secular divides, New Age astrology and Spiritism.

As a scholar of religion who recently wrote a book about Puerto Rican Muslims, I find echoes of that same strength and artistry in their stories. Although marginalized among Muslims, Puerto Ricans and other U.S. citizens, they find fresh ways to express their cultural heritage and practice their faith, creating new communities and connections along the way. Similar to Bad Bunny’s music, Puerto Rican Muslims’ lives challenge how we think about race, religion and belonging in the Americas.

Bad Bunny performs during his ‘No Me Quiero Ir De Aqui’ residency on July 11, 2025, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Stories of struggle

There are no exact numbers, but before recent crises, Puerto Rico – an archipelago of 3.2. million people – had about 3,500 to 5,000 Muslims, many of them Palestinian. Economic hardship, natural disasters such as hurricanes Irma and Maria, and government neglect have since forced many to leave, however.

As of 2017, there were also an estimated 11,000 to 15,400 Puerto Rican Muslims among the nearly 6 million Puerto Ricans and nearly 4 million Muslims in the United States.

Like any Puerto Rican, these Muslims know the struggles of colonialism’s ongoing impact, from blackouts and economic inequality to racism. For example, in the viral 23-minute video for “El Apagón,” journalist Bianca Graulau outlines how tax incentives for external investors are displacing locals – a theme reinforced in Bad Bunny’s later song, “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii.”

The video for “El Apagón” includes a short documentary about gentrification on the archipelago.

Converts to Islam also face unique challenges – and not just Islamophobia. Many are told they are “not real Puerto Ricans” because of their newfound faith. Some are treated as foreigners in their own families and friend groups, often asked whether they are abandoning their culture to “become Arab.”

To be a Puerto Rican Muslim, then, is to negotiate being and belonging at numerous intersections of diversity and difference.

Still, some connect their Muslim identity to moments in Puerto Rican history. In interviews, they told me how they identify with Muslims who came with Spanish conquistadors during colonial times. Others draw inspiration from enslaved Africans brought to the Caribbean. Many of them were Muslim and resisted their condition in ways large and small: fleeing to the forest to pray, for example, or living as “maroons” – people who escaped and formed their own communities.

Many ways to be Puerto Rican

Puerto Rican culture cannot be neatly mapped onto a single tradition. The archipelago’s religion, music and art blend together influences from Indigenous Taíno, African, Spanish and American cultures. Religious processions pass by cars blasting reggaetón. Shrines to Our Lady of Divine Providence stand beside U.S. chain restaurants and murals demanding independence.

Bad Bunny embodies this fusion. He is rebellious yet rooted, irreverent yet deeply Puerto Rican. His music blends contemporary sounds from reggaetón and Latin trap with traditional “bomba y plena.” It all adds up to something distinctly “Boricua,” a term for Puerto Ricans drawn from the Indigenous Taíno name for the island, “Borikén.”

A mural in San Juan, Puerto Rico, photographed in 2017, says, ‘We don’t understand this democracy.’
Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images

Puerto Rican Muslims wrestle with what it means to be authentically Boricua, though. In particular, their lives reveal how religion is both a boundary and a bridge: defining belonging while creating new ways to imagine it.

Since Spanish colonization in the 1500s, most Puerto Ricans have been Roman Catholic. But over the past two centuries, many other Christian groups have arrived, including Seventh-day Adventists, Lutherans and Pentecostals. Today, more than half of Puerto Ricans identify as Catholic and about one-third as Protestant.

Alongside these traditions, Afro-Caribbean traditions such as Santería, Espiritismo and Santerismo – a mix of the two – remain active. There are also small communities of Jews, Rastafari and Muslims.

Even with this diversity, converts to Islam are sometimes accused of betraying their culture. One young man told me that when he became Muslim, his mother said he had not only betrayed Christ but also “our culture.”

Yet Puerto Rican Muslims point to Arabic influences in Spanish words. They celebrate traces of Islamic design in colonial and revival architecture that reflects Muslims’ multicentury presence in Spain, from the 700s until the fall of the last Muslim kingdom in Granada in 1492. They also cook up halal versions of classic Puerto Rican dishes.

Like Bad Bunny, these converts remix what it means to be Puerto Rican, showing how Puerto Rico’s sense of identity – or “puertorriqueñidad” – is not exclusively Christian, but complex and constantly evolving.

A member of the Council in Defense of the Indigenous Rights of Boriken, dressed in Taino traditional clothing, sounds a conch during a march through San Juan, Puerto Rico, on July 11, 2020.
Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images


In solidarity

Many Puerto Rican converts frame their faith as a counternarrative, rejecting the Christianity imposed by Spanish colonizers. They also resist Islamophobia, racism and foreign domination, with some converts drawn to the religion as a way to oppose these forces. Similar to Bad Bunny’s music, which often critiques colonialism and social constraints, they push back against systems that try to define who they can be.

To that end, Puerto Rican Muslims also build connections with other groups facing injustice. In reggaetón terms, they form their own “corillos” – groups of friends – united by shared struggles.

They demonstrate on behalf of Palestinians, seeing them as another colonized people without a nation. The first Latino Muslim organization, Alianza Islámica – founded by Puerto Rican converts in 1987 – emerged out of the era’s push for minorities’ rights around the New York City metro area. And after the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting, where about half of the 49 victims killed were Puerto Rican, and the mosque attended by the shooter was intentionally set on fire, Boricua Muslims joined with LGBTQ+, Muslim and Latino communities to grieve and demand justice.

Pro-Palestine supporters attend a rally to end the war on Nov. 12, 2023, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Miguel J. Rodríguez Carrillo/VIEWpress via Getty Images

In these ways, Puerto Rican Muslims remind me that notions of community, identity or justice do not stand on their own. For many people, they are linked – parts of the same fight for dignity and freedom.

That is why, when I listen to songs like “NUEVAYoL” or “El Apagón,” I think of the Puerto Rican Muslims I know in places such as Puerto Rico, Florida, New Jersey, Texas and New York. Their stories, like Bad Bunny’s music, show how being Puerto Rican today means constantly negotiating who you are and where you belong. And that religion, like music, can carry the sound of struggle – but also the hope of one day overcoming the injustices and inequalities of everyday life.

(Ken Chitwood, Affiliate Researcher, Religion and Civic Culture Center, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; Bayreuth University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)


The Conversation religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The Conversation is solely responsible for this content.

Trump's bluster just exposed this taxpayer-funded scheme to make his friends rich

Thom Hartmann
November 5, 2025

COMMON DREAMS


A fake $2020 bill featuring former President Donald Trump. 

Photo illustration: Christopher Sciacca/Shutterstock


Democrats won big in last night’s election, and it’s a great sign for the future of American democracy. Voters rejected racism, fear, and cruelty. They said in a loud and singular voice — overwhelmingly voting for moderate Democrats, progressive Democrats, and even a ballot initiative without a single person on the ballot — that they want their democracy back.

Nonetheless, Mike Johnson is still keeping the House on vacation and John Thune is still refusing to break a Senate filibuster and reopen the government. And, crucially, Trump is still refusing to fully fund SNAP/food stamps, even though he can easily put his hands on the money.

Yesterday’s New York Times’ podcast The Daily interviewed a group of West Virginians who’d lined up at a food bank because Trump had cut off their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds. Many of them told their interviewer that they worked full-time jobs but still didn’t make enough money to feed their families.

Roughly a third of the people on SNAP, in fact, work a regular job, and 70 percent of them work full-time.

While Trump and the ghouls in his administration tried to cut off SNAP benefits (and are now threatening to cut off unemployment benefits if Democrats don’t relent and let them gut Obamacare), what this entire drama is really revealing is how what started out as programs to help the unemployed or disabled people have now become billion dollar subsidies for morbidly rich employers and their massive corporations.

When FDR created the food stamp program in 1938, it had three main purposes. The first was to generate Keynesian “from the bottom up” financial activity by giving government money to retailers, who would then circulate it in, and thus stimulate, local economies. The second was to provide a market for struggling farmers, millions of whom were then facing bankruptcy. And the third was to ameliorate hunger among America’s poor.

Today, the SNAP program still accomplishes the goals of helping out farmers, supporting local food stores, and reducing hunger among America’s poor, but about a third of the program has also become a way of insuring that America’s morbidly rich billionaires get even richer on the taxpayer’s dime.

And it’s not just SNAP: you could make the same argument for much of Medicaid and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (TANF times-out at 5 years).

As long as employers know that their employees can get SNAP, Medicaid, and TANF benefits even when they’re working full time, they’ll keep wages low and thus profits high. It’s really that simple.

With FDR‘s new deal, Democrats explicitly proclaimed that if you worked a full-time job you should be able to buy a house and raise a family.

Republicans, on the other hand, have argued since the 1930s that employers should have sole control over what paychecks they cut, even resisting the minimum wage. And now they’ve found a slick new way to exploit Democratic programs like SNAP and Medicaid to help employers further lower their payroll expenses.

Back in 1817, economist David Ricardo coined what he called the “Iron Law of Wages.” His point was that there’s a “marketplace” for labor and the price for labor — the wages paid — in that marketplace is determined by two main variables: actual take-home pay and the local cost of living.

Employers, in other words, carefully calibrate what they’ll pay people to meet (but not exceed) what their workers need to minimally meet the local cost of living. It’s why, for example, wages are higher in expensive cities and lower in cheaper rural areas.

Ricardo’s Iron Law is also why when taxes go down on working class people the effect is paradoxical: tax cuts will always, within a few years, cause corresponding wage cuts, while tax increases on working class people drive wages up.

“Taxes on wages will raise wages,” Ricardo wrote. “If the taxes, instead of being increased, were diminished, wages would fall.”

The reason is easy to understand: tax cuts mean more take-home pay, and when employers see that their workers are taking home more money than they need to live, they’ll lower wages to get back to where take-home pay was before the tax cut. On the other hand, if income taxes are increased employers will be forced to pay more so people’s take-home pay can once again cover the local cost of living.

We’ve even seen this work in real time. During the 1930s-1960s era, income taxes went up considerably on working class people to pay for WWII and digging America out of the Republican Great Depression; wages similarly went up. The years following Reagan’s, Bush Jr’s, and Trump’s tax cuts, however, each saw wages fall. (The same thing happened when income taxes fell after WWI and wages similarly dropped a year later.)

Which brings us to how SNAP, Medicare, and TANF have become Billionaire Protection Programs, helping them keep wages low and profits high.

Ricardo’s Iron Law works the same way with government benefits, although they largely didn’t exist in his time.

Employers know what people need to take home to meet the local cost of living, but when government subsidizes people’s food (SNAP), healthcare (Medicaid), and/or rent and utilities (TANF), employers also know that’s money they don’t have to pay out as wages.

Billionaires like the Walton Family, in other words, know that they can cut their employees’ wages by the same amount as the government subsidies that are available to those workers. Every penny of government benefits, under this GOP strategy, becomes a penny less that Walmart, for example, has to pay its people who qualify for benefits.

The one-third of SNAP recipients who are working, for example, are receiving around $3 billion a month in food support from the government; that’s $3 billion that employers can keep for themselves instead of having to pay out as wages.

Republicans love to pretend that these programs are purely designed for the truly needy (and that’s generally been the goal of Democrats who’ve created them), but they give away the game when they repeatedly — and almost always successfully — force work requirements into them.

Why, after all, would anybody put together a program to feed hungry people and then demand that, to get the full benefit, they had to have a job?

Shouldn’t every job pay enough — as Democrats have argued since the Minimum Wage was established in the 1930s — to prevent hunger? Shouldn’t people who work full-time make enough to cover healthcare, rent, and utilities?


The answer to this 50-year-long GOP scam isn’t to kill off these three programs, but, instead, to do the exact opposite of what Republicans are constantly demanding: eliminate eligibility for people working full-time jobs.

That way, employers will be forced to pay a living wage to their workers, rather than padding their bottom lines with workers’ food, medical, and rent subsidies financed by our tax dollars.

It’ll also increase pressure within state and local governments to raise minimum wages, another demonstrably positive outcome that Republicans and fat-cat billionaires hate.


Obviously, a change that radical would have to be phased in gradually and carefully, combined with increases in the Minimum Wage, so peoples lives are not disrupted.

But doing so would blow up the low-wage business model giant employers have been using for decades, converting government subsidies year-after-year into new yachts for their billionaire owners.

So, whenever you hear Republicans go on and on about the importance of “weeding out the welfare queens with work requirements,” know that what you’re really hearing is a variation on, “We want taxpayers to subsidize low-wage workers so the billionaires who fund our campaigns can buy another mansion or newspaper or TV network.”

Sometimes the biggest Republican scams are run right out in the open, right under our noses. It just takes a moment of reflection — and a simple insight from a 19th century economist — to see through them.

Hopefully the GOP’s attempt to increase Americans pain via SNAP denials will backfire and spark a much-needed conversation about how all this works. Last night’s elections are a good sign that we’re moving in that direction.

That can lead to remaking our work and welfare systems so they’ll once again benefit average people, instead of also subsidizing Trump’s plutocrat friends.

Mamdani Won New York City, But the Battle for Winning a Working-Class Agenda Has Just Begun

The battle for a more affordable and egalitarian society is just beginning. Leaders like Zohran Mamdani need to gain even deeper traction with working-class voters, no matter how working class is defined and no matter their racial identity—if they want to win.



New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during the “New York is Not For Sale” rally alongside Senator Bernie Sanders, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, New York City, United States, on October 26, 2025.
(Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Les Leopold
Nov 07, 2025

Common Dreams

It truly is amazing that a Democratic Socialist has become mayor of the largest city in the United States, and that in the first line of his acceptance speech he quoted Eugene V. Debs, the brave socialist labor leader who was imprisoned in 1985 during the Pullman Strike and again in 1918 for his opposition to WWI:
“The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.'”

Mamdani’s youth, charisma, humor, and incredible organizational skills led to this remarkable achievement. He worked hard and he earned it, and so did the many progressive groups that supported him.




‘Hope Is Alive!’ Mamdani Victory in NYC Seen as Historic Turning Point



Raucous Mamdani Rally Reveals Political Battle Stretches Beyond New York City

Mamdani may have the abilities and the working-class agenda to become a major transformational political leader. Free buses, free childcare, and a rent freeze are concrete and achievable, but the opposition will be fierce, especially as he intends to increase taxes on the rich and corporations to pay for these programs. And powerful landlords will be up in arms. This is the definition of class struggle.

There will be major battles ahead that won’t be settled by Mamdani’s charisma and negotiating skills alone.

Mamdani is operating in the belly of the beast called runaway inequality. It’s nearly impossible to wrap our minds around the wealth that’s concentrated in New York. There are 123 billionaires living in NYC with a combined net worth more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars. And those numbers are surely an underestimate, given the many who have hidden their purchases of luxurious Manhattan apartments using shell companies.

To succeed against the rich and powerful, Mamdani will need a mass movement behind him, and that movement has to include enthusiastic support and the active participation of New York’s working class and labor unions.

Does he already have it? Is his victory the result of overwhelming support from highly educated liberals? Or has his working-class agenda also excited the working class more broadly, the way Eugene Debs did when he received nearly a million votes in his run for president in 1912?

All we have to go by, right now, are the exit polls, which aren’t really designed to include a clear demographic definition of the working class. But there is some suggestive information.

Let’s start with the standard media definition of working class based on education: You are often counted as being in the working class if you don’t have a four-year college degree. By this definition, Mamdani received most of his support from college-educated voters and ran behind Cuomo among working-class voters.New Yorkers are well educated: 58 percent of all the voters in this election had a four-year college degree or higher.
This highly educated group overwhelmingly supported Mamdani over Cuomo, 57 percent to 37 percent.
But Mamdani ran behind Cuomo among those who never attended college, 41 percent to 48 percent. One out of five voters are in this group.

The picture becomes blurrier if working-class is defined as having a lower income. New York voters are fairly evenly split between those whose family income is less than $100,000 year (58%), and those with $100,000 or more in family income (42%). And Mamdani’s support was identical between the two groups (51%), an almost exact match with his final vote of 51.5 percent.

But a closer look at the income brackets shows that Mamdani didn’t do as well with those with family incomes under $30,000. That group accounts for 16 percent of all voters. They favored Cuomo 50 percent to Mamdani’s 41 percent. But Mamdani won every other income bracket except those with family incomes of $300,000 or more, which he lost to Cuomo 61 percent to 34 percent. No way was a Democratic Socialist going to do well with the group he promised to tax more heavily to pay for his agenda.

Cutting it up into two income slices, Mamdani did slightly better with upper-income voters than lower-income voters. Those with family incomes of less than $50,000 gave 47 percent of their votes to Mamdani, and those with more than $50,000 supported him with 52 percent of their votes.

Revenge of the White Working Class?

Unlike Debs, Mamdani did not come out of the labor movement. He’s well-educated, an Asian immigrant born in Africa, and Muslim. Was that all too much for the allegedly racist white working-class? The exit polls don’t provide the crosstabs to give us definitive answers, but we can get some clues.

Here’s Mamdani’s support by ethnicity (of all educational and income groups):White 46 %
Black 55 %
Hispanic 49 %
Asian 61 %
Other 51 %

It’s hard to point the finger at white racism when support for Mamdani is almost identical between white voters and Hispanic voters. The big outlier is Asian, Mamdani’s own ethnic group.

The breakdown by gender shows less support among white men, but again the gaps are not gigantic:White men 43%
White women 48%
Black men 60%
Black women 52%
Hispanic men 52%
Hispanic women 48%

Since we don’t know the income or education levels of these white men it’s not possible to see if working-class white men were less supportive, but that’s probably the case given the overall lower Mamdani numbers among those without four-year college degrees. However, while it’s not possible to tease apart racial identity and class when it comes to working-class voters of all shades, nothing big jumps out to suggest that this contest was about racial identity.

Mamdani needs those working-class voters, no matter how working class is defined and no matter what their ethnicity. He’s developed enormous support among liberal, well-educated New Yorkers, and that’s all to the good. But to take on the world’s richest, most powerful elites, that enthusiasm must spread deeply into the working class, where—even in New York—MAGA festers.

There will be major battles ahead that won’t be settled by Mamdani’s charisma and negotiating skills alone. That will require a mass movement in support of the progressive ideas the city’s new mayor campaigned on, the kind of movement New York hasn’t seen since the 1930s. Let’s hope Mamdani can reach even more deeply into the working class to strengthen his support. He’s going to need them.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and author of the new book, “Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It." (2024). Read more of his work on his substack here.
Full Bio >

Time to Flex: Lessons for Mamdani From My Time With AOC

You can’t change a system by sending one or two people into it and hoping for the best. You have to build and use political power to break the system’s ability to resist you.


Sen. Bernie Sanders on stage with Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as over 13,000 people packed Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, New York on October 26, 2025.
(Photo by Neil Constantine/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Corbin Trent
Nov 07, 2025

Common Dreams

Lots of elections happened on Tuesday. Most of them good news for 2026. There are signs that the MAGA fever is breaking. It’s important that whatever we work to replace it with comes from a place of understanding how we got here, and builds the power necessary to repair the damage.

The most hopeful and potentially transformative victory of the night was that of Zohran Mamdani. He won the New York City mayoral race with over 50% of the vote, beating Andrew Cuomo for a second time. The turnout was amazing. More than 2 million people voted.

Raucous Mamdani Rally Reveals Political Battle Stretches Beyond New York City



‘Tax the Rich!’: Packed Mamdani Rally Features Sanders, AOC, and Hochul Ahead of Election Day

And here’s what should terrify the Democratic establishment: Mamdani didn’t just win the city. He won decisively in Hakeem Jeffries’ district. He won in Ritchie Torres’ district. These guys are vulnerable as hell in a primary, and they know it.

But I’ve been here before. I was there for AOC’s first primary victory. I helped recruit her to run, helped build her campaign, and then worked as her advisor and communications director. I can tell you with absolute certainty: this is just the beginning. And if the movement around Mamdani doesn’t understand that and act accordingly, this opportunity will slip away like so many others have.

I’m hopeful. Mamdani’s victory is real and it’s important. But my experience tells me that without active, aggressive political power-building, it won’t translate into anything more tangible.

The difference this time is that Mamdani doesn’t have to be one person alone. He’s an executive running the country’s largest city, which gives him powers and capacity that one member of Congress - one out of 535 - could never have. And NY has primary elections coming in June 2026. Federal races, state assembly, state senate—all of it.

The Democratic establishment is already moving to contain him. Obama is reaching out. Bill Ackman is extending olive branches. And they’ll succeed unless the movement around him understands that winning the election was just the starting line.

The Power Problem We Had With AOC

We won in 2018. We proved a grassroots movement could build a political operation to recruit and elect a new type of Democrat. But here’s what we didn’t do: we didn’t immediately use that victory to build more power. We didn’t flex.

We won one seat. We celebrated. We staffed up. We tried to work within the system. And while we were doing that, the establishment built a wall around her. Seniority rules shut her out of real committee power. Leadership froze her out. The party used her as a boogeyman to fundraise off while refusing to even look at her agenda.

We were taught the wrong lesson: that getting people in office was the goal. That was the mistake. You can’t change a system by sending one or two people into it and hoping for the best. You have to build and use political power to break the system’s ability to resist you.

What Actually Flexing Power Looks Like

Imagine if, right now, while Mamdani is being sworn in, AOC was publicly exploring a run for governor against Kathy Hochul in 2026. Not “maybe someday.” Now. Publicly. With rallies. With Bernie Sanders. With pressure.

Imagine if the movement announced tomorrow that they’re running a primary challenger against Hakeem Jeffries. Not quietly. Publicly. With resources. With a candidate who can actually compete. Imagine if Former DNC Vice Chair Michael Blake, the challenger who announced he is running against Torres yesterday, gets backed by Mamdani this week.

Imagine if the entire energy and machinery that just won a mayoral race with 2 million voters doesn’t go dormant. Imagine if it stays active, visible, and aggressive. Imagine if the message to every Democrat in New York is crystal clear: if you block Mamdani’s agenda, you will be primaried. You will be challenged. You will lose your seat.

That’s flexing power. That’s what we didn’t do. That’s what has to happen now.

Governor Hochul has already announced she won’t support tax increases on the wealthy—the foundation of Mamdani’s entire agenda. Hakeem Jeffries gave him the most tepid endorsement imaginable. Ritchie Torres called him “treacherously smart” and warned he’d make New York “ground zero for anti-Zionism.”

These people aren’t confused. They’re opposed to him. And they’ll stop him cold unless they fear losing their jobs. Not theoretically. Actually.

The Easy Enemy and the Hard One

When you’re fighting MAGA, it’s simple. They wear red hats. They’re loud. You know exactly who they are.

The Democratic establishment is different. They seem like they’re on your side. They talk about the same values. They talk about “pragmatism” and being “confined by what’s possible.” There’s always an explanation for why they couldn’t deliver.

I spent years wanting to believe those explanations meant something. That they were potential allies who just needed the right pressure.

But I don’t believe it anymore. I think they know their role. I think they know they are barriers to change, and they’re comfortable with that role.

If democratic socialism is shown to be productive, transformational, and beneficial to the vast majority of New Yorkers, it will have reverberations across the entire country. This is the front line. And they know it.

What This Actually Takes

One person can’t change something this entrenched alone. One person—no matter how brilliant—cannot overcome a system designed to resist them.

During the New Deal, it took three election cycles to build a supermajority. It can happen again in 2026, 2028, 2030. That’s the timeline.

When you’re fighting MAGA, it’s simple. They wear red hats. They’re loud. You know exactly who they are. The Democratic establishment is different. They seem like they’re on your side.

While Mamdani is picking up the trash and making the city function, the movement around him has to be simultaneously primarying Jeffries, running challengers against Torres, recruiting state legislators. It means rallies. Visibility. Making clear political risk to every Democrat in the state who opposes his agenda.

Yes, the infrastructure is collapsing. Yes, construction in New York costs seven times what it costs anywhere else. Yes, the MTA has a $62 billion backlog. Those problems require competent governance. But none of it matters if Hochul and the State Legislature just block him. So while Mamdani’s team is fixing potholes, the movement has to be in the streets, at the rallies, primarying the people in the way.

Where We Go From Here

I’m hopeful. Mamdani’s victory is real and it’s important. But my experience tells me that without active, aggressive political power-building, it won’t translate into anything more tangible.

The impulse will be to work within the system. Staff the administration. Make government function. That has to happen. But it can’t be all that happens. You’ve got to be running a political revolution simultaneously. You’ve got to use your platform. You’ve got to make it clear that opposing this agenda has political consequences.

Because the last 10 months aren’t a departure from the norm. They’re the natural evolution of the past 50 years. And if we want something different, we have to build it. Fast. Visibly. With political risk and political courage.

The impulse will be to work within the system. Staff the administration. Make government function. That has to happen. But it can’t be all that happens.

Starting Monday, November 10, I’m publishing four weeks of essays, supported by a series of videos, laying out exactly what this looks like. Not theory. Actual strategy. Actual targets. Actual timelines.

Then, on Tuesday December 9 - International Anti-Corruption Day - I’ll launch a new initiative designed to reframe and refocus our collective efforts toward meaningful change.

This is the work. This is what it takes. Whether this becomes a moment of transformative power, or just another progressive mayor and a handful of individual candidates fighting alone, depends on what happens in the next six months.

We’re just getting warmed up.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Corbin Trent is an Appalachian-born general contractor and political organizer. He co-founded Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, helped recruit AOC, and served as her first communications director. He publishes AmericasUndoing.com, a project exposing America’s economic decline and calling for bold, public-led rebuilding. Find morework on his TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook channels.
Full Bio >

Op-Ed: Mamdani beats billionaires, redefines US political demographics. This time, the big money lost


By Paul Wallis
EDITOR AT LARGE

DIGITAL JOURNAL
November 5, 2025


Zohran Mamdani, who unashamedly describes himself as a socialist and campaigned on reducing costs for ordinary New Yorkers. - Copyright AFP Carlos Fabal

US politics is incredibly, inexcusably, ugly. Between the obscene self-interest and self-worship of billionaires, the nation is in unbelievably bad shape. Domestic realities make the political verbosity ridiculous.

Mamdani’s big mayoral win seems to draw a line after the blatant influence of unelected, very wealthy people dictating to the electorate. A large number of billionaires actively opposed Mamdani with big donations. The endorsement of both Trump and Musk didn’t make any difference.

It’s no surprise Americans are looking for better options. Any vestige of competence is hard to find in US news. Younger Americans are quite rightly and clearly tired of “Old White Guy Syndrome”. The perception is that the older guys have lost touch. Bernie Sanders seems to be the only exception.

The Democrats have been getting fully deserved flak for losing elections to the improbable Trump circus and the many seemingly inevitable train wrecks that followed.

That’s why this election is so very important. The Democrats have been given an unambiguous message regarding their performance. The Republicans have used their familiar strategies and failed utterly for the first time ever.

Mamdani, who bills himself as a Democratic Socialist. He couldn’t possibly have taken a position in more direct opposition to the obsolete, faded black and white political sides of US politics.

If you’re a billionaire, what do you want? Revenge?

The world doesn’t owe you a living, either.

Surely you can afford at least some sanity?

As total irresponsibility goes, such rich self-interest is insane. America needs more than geriatric rich egos to exist.

The rest of the world often wonders why the US is in such a mess and so very far behind the times. The incredibly advanced society and general prosperity everyone admired has been replaced by a few dismal egomaniacs.

American politics and the USA desperately need to modernize. The American idea of “socialism” is a huge problem. No universal health care, and medical bankruptcies are appallingly common. No free education, and you can see the results for yourself.

New York City’s high-profile mayoral race features state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (L) facing off against former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic Party primary – Copyright AFP Cléa PÉCULIER, Paz PIZARRO, Frédéric BOURGEAIS, Clara MORINEAU

Socially, it’s just as bad, or worse. Meaningless elitist groups that might as well have come from the 18th century constantly infest the news. Organized crime, fraudsters, and the rest of the largely useless corporate sector are on holiday and making lots of money.

Tax laws that could have been written on stone tablets create revenue havoc. Tax evasion cripples revenue at all levels of government. There’s no general consumer tax, unlike most of the rest of the world. It’s primitive beyond description.

What does this have to do with anything, you ask?

That decay is exactly what people are voting against.

It’s hardly surprising that people don’t want to vote for anyone who accepts this ancient, repulsive mess.

That’s what the Mamdani win means. Never mind the politics. This was a vote against obsolescence.

_________________________________________________________

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.


Champagne and cheers across New York as Mamdani soars to victory


By AFP
November 5, 2025


Supporters of New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Supporters of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani celebrate during an election night event at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater - Copyright AFP Angelina Katsanis

Maggy DONALDSON

Donald Trump had decisively won the US presidential election last November and very few people outside New York’s leftist circles knew Zohran Mamdani, who had just declared his longshot mayoral candidacy.

What a difference a year can make.

Crowds across the city chanted Mamdani’s name on Tuesday as champagne and tears flowed for the democratic socialist from Queens turned New York mayor-elect.

“Mamdaniiiiii,” one group exclaimed, substituting the 34-year-old’s name for the customary “cheese” as they posed for a photo at a Brooklyn bar watch party.

Voters gathered there in cautious optimism, sporting Mamdani merch as they anxiously awaited the evening’s results, classic songs such as Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” and edgier tracks from Lou Reed blasting from the speakers.

“It’s like, too scary to be hopeful,” Michelle Dimuzio told AFP with a nervous laugh before the polls closed.

However, Dimuzio’s trepidation proved unwarranted as early results began to roll in with Mamdani soundly in the lead.

The entire bar erupted in cheers and even a toddler joined in the applause, uttering a newly learned word that met the moment — “bravo!”

And when the race was called for New York’s first Muslim mayor, barely half an hour later, the excitement was palpable at bars across Brooklyn and Queens, where street parties raged, and in Manhattan, where the owner of a posh brasserie ordered celebratory glasses of champagne for everyone on the house.

It was a win by New Yorkers, for New Yorkers, Ben Parisi told AFP.

The 40-year-old said the night stood in stark contrast to Republican Trump’s election a year ago.

It was a “local victory” that offered a means of “resisting and pushing back” against the political establishment in Washington, Parisi said.

“A lot of us worked hard in one way or another to make this happen,” Parisi said, “and here we are… we get to celebrate.”

– ‘We are you’ –

Elsewhere in Brooklyn, a packed concert venue danced to Mamdani’s once-obscure, now-viral hip hop track “Nani”, which the young politician recorded years ago under his rap name “Mr. Cardamom.”

Supporters at Mamdani HQ greeted him with a deafening ovation as their incoming mayor walked onstage, flashing his megawatt smile that has lit up the city through his nonstop campaigning.

The once-improbable candidate claimed victory for his campaign but also for those who “made this movement their own” — his acknowledgements included Yemeni bodega owners, Mexican abuelas, and Uzbek nurses.

He also cited Eugene Debs, who at the turn of the 20th century was one of the best-known American socialists.

And he thanked young constituents who catapulted his candidacy, “the next generation of New Yorkers who refused to accept that the promise of a better future was a relic of the past.”

“We will fight for you,” Mamdani promised, “because we are you.”

He had criss-crossed the city again and again with his relentless ground game and, in his final days on the trail, Mamdani was seen traversing the Brooklyn bridge, doing tai chi with seniors and out at clubs till dawn.

Mamdani brought with him a message of affordability that 37-year-old Dimuzio said struck a chord with New Yorkers.

Dimuzio described living paycheck to paycheck despite a full-time job, and said Mamdani’s focus on making New York a more financially feasible place to live spoke to her in a way she said politicians on both sides of the aisle rarely do.

“He sticks to his message,” she said, and “he doesn’t just give the political tossed salad.”

Mamdani repeated that message Tuesday night, leading a raucous call-and-response of his promises, which include freezing rent and institutionalizing universal child care.

“Our greatness will be anything but abstract,” Mamdani told the crowd. “If tonight teaches us anything, it is that convention has held us back.”